Libya

They probably don’t call themselves that, but they should. A few months ago they were a ragtag amateur collection of angry young men seeking freedom from a forty-year tyranny.

They didn’t have a chance in hell of succeeding but they charged into battle against professional, disciplined forces. And got their collective ass kicked. And refused to quit.

NATO forces saved them, kept them going, helped train them and turn them into a force that could survive and learn. But those guys did it themselves, did the fighting, did the dying. Their blood stains the sand from one end of Libya to the other. And as of this morning they’ve bloodied Tripoli and are on the verge of ending Kadhafy.

I hope they hold it together and develop a rational, egalitarian government with a minimum of bloodshed.

Was the United States right to get involved?

Morally? Yes.

Financially? No.

The United States is failing to care for its own people, to take care of its own governance. Does it have the right to interfere in the governance of other countries?

Does such interference nonetheless make the United States a moral country in such matters?

No.

Syria’s tyrant continues to slaughter the Syrian people and continues to lie to the world about his actions. The United States does virtually nothing, its proclamation of sanctions an empty gesture, unsupported by other major players in the sanctions game. Will the Syrians, if they get rid of al-Assad, look to Libya and ask where was the United States when we fought and died?

And Bahrain, what of Bahrain? The people rose up, were slaughtered, were further victimized by Saudi troops, while the United States looked on, supported the Saudi move, said nothing, did nothing, unwilling to risk losing its military assets in Bahrain. What will the Bahrainis ask when they look to Libya?

Afghanistan? The United States, and its so-called allies, continue to brutalize that country by fighting, on the ground, in a civil and religious war. They have succeeded only in destabilizing the entire region, and continue to honor their own dead by insuring that more Americans and many more Afghanis will die in pursuit of a vague goal that makes no sense on any level, to wit, that no terrorist ever attacks the United States from Afghanistan again, completely ignoring that the attack in question came not from Afghanistan, but from airports and flight training centers in the United States and could just as easily have been organized in Peoria and operated from Dallas. But the killing and the waste goes on under the aegis of bobblehead politicians in Washington and their profiteering corporate masters.

Iraq? What’s to be said of Iraq? Only that George W. Bush and his cohort of amoral greedmeisters should long ago have been arrested and locked up in Guantanamo with the so-called terrorists from overseas. The Bushies would have been the real terrorists in Gitmo cages.

So while the Libyan fighters deserve their victory, the United States, which helped the Lions of Libya defeat their tyrant, once again appears to be the clumsy elephant in the room, the amoral giant which has eyes only for its bright and shiny drug of choice – oil – and cares not a whit who dies as it pursues its addiction, pursues it right to the graveyards of Asia and the Middle East as it makes a graveyard of the world.

4 Responses

Libyan rebels asked the West for help and the League of Arab Nations was the voice they used to make the plea. The opposition in Syria doesn’t want help from the West. So, diplomatically there’s a difference. As for leaving people in our own country languishing….we should be able to chew gum and walk.

I’m happy for the Libyan rebels though. I think the Irish in me is always ready for a fight if the cause is good. 🙂

Who in the Syrian opposition has said they don’t want help? I haven’t followed the story closely. It does seem that sources outside Syria, as well as the Syrian government, are telling the West to stay out of it (France, Iran, at least)